NATIVE LAW
Supreme Court of Alaska (2022)
Sarah Couillard
In Native Village of Chignik Lagoon v. State, Department of Health & Social Services, 518 P.3d
708 (Alaska 2022), the supreme court held that a child’s tribe for the purposes of the Indian
Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is either a tribe of which the child is a member, or a tribe in which
the child is eligible for membership because a biological parent is a member. (Id. at 716). The
parental rights of a child’s biological parents were terminated under ICWA. (Id. at 710). The
Native Village of Wales, of which the child’s biological mother and biological maternal
grandmother were tribal members, moved to transfer further proceedings to its tribal court. (Id.).
After the transfer was granted, the child’s foster father enrolled as a member of the Native
Village of Chignik Lagoon. (Id. at 711). Chignik Lagoon then filed a petition to invalidate the
transfer order, arguing that it, rather than Wales, was the child’s tribe for ICWA purposes. (Id.).
The superior court deferred to the tribes’ determinations that the child was a member of Wales
and eligible for membership in Chignik Lagoon. (Id. at 712). It denied Chignik Lagoon’s petition
and found that Wales was the child’s tribe for ICWA purposes. (Id. at 711–12). Chignik Lagoon
appealed. (Id. at 712). The supreme court reasoned that ICWA’s definition of “Indian child”
requires either that the child be a member of a tribe or that the child be eligible for membership
in a tribe of which a biological parent is a member. (Id. at 713–16). The court further reasoned
that because neither the child nor either of the child’s biological parents were tribal members of
Chignik Lagoon, the child was not an “Indian child” of Chignik Lagoon for ICWA purposes. (Id.
at 716). Because the child was a Wales tribal member, the supreme court held that Wales, and
not Chignik Lagoon, was the child’s tribe for ICWA purposes. (Id.) Affirming the lower court’s
finding, the supreme court held that a child’s tribe for the purposes of ICWA is either a tribe of
which the child is a member, or a tribe in which the child is eligible for membership because a
biological parent is a member. (Id.).
